Lee Perry & Subatomic Sound System spent 2016 on tour across the globe, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the 1976 Super Ape album by performing the album in its entirety. Subatomic led a successful highly publicized Kickstarter to build a 12 foot tall custom inflatable ape from the album cover. The Super Ape album is a cornerstone of dub music, a classic of independent production recorded at Perry’s Black Ark Studio, and an inspiration for bass heavy music across many genres and generation.

Starting at late 2015′s Dub Champions Festival in NYC through the end of 2016 concluding at France’s Telerama Dub Festival & Loop Berlin festival, Lee “Scratch” Perry performed the Super Ape album in its entirety with NYC’s Subatomic Sound System, his hybrid band of new school electronics and veteran Jamaican musicians from Perry’s Black Ark era recordings. In 2017 they will mix material from Super Ape with new bass heavy music like their recent chart topping single “Black Ark Vampires” and other classics from Perry’s work with the likes of Bob Marley & Max Romeo.

Producer, mixer and Grammy-winning reggae dub artist, Lee “Scratch” Perry has been overturning tradition and confounding conventional wisdom for more than five decades. In the process, the widely acknowledged father of dub reggae became arguably the first creatively driven “artist-producer” in modern recorded music. In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Perry on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

Born in Jamaica in 1936, Lee Perry began in the music business in the 1950’s and by the 1960’s became known for his innovative production techniques as well as his eccentric character. His first single “People Funny Boy” in 1968 was notable for its innovative use of sampling as well as a fast, chugging beat that would soon become identifiable as “reggae”. Concurrent with his own releases with the Upsetters, Perry produced numerous reggae artists at his Black Ark studio, including Bob Marley and the Wailers, The Heptones, and Max Romeo.

After his famed Black Ark Studio was consumed by fire, Perry took refuge in England and the U.S., performing live and making records with collaborators from a wide range of musical genres, all artists who had been inspired by his innovative work: British dub producers Adrian Sherwood and Mad Professor, punk legends The Clash and Public Image, rap innovators the Beastie Boys, and in recent years the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards, Funkadelic’s George Clinton, rocker Andrew W.K., electronic artists like The Orb, and of course NYC bass music specialists Subatomic Sound System who back in 2007 collaborated with Dubblestandart on Scratch’s first dubstep remixes.

For over six years in the USA, Subatomic Sound System has been Scratch’s go to band for bringing his Black Ark Studio sound live to the stage. Spearheaded by they electronic production wizardry of Emch, an avid Perry disciple, the band is a unique hybrid configuration that brings together a handful of live musicians like veteran Jamaican percussionist Larry McDonald with computers and live dub mixing of classic recordings as well as brand new sounds Scratch hears from outer space.

Lee “Scratch” Perry, now into his sixth decade as a pop-music provocateur, has few peers when it comes to fresh ideas and their implementation. He remains one of the world’s most imaginative sonic architects.

“NYC-2-Africa-2-Brasil” features two of the world’s top reggae vocalists, Anthony B and Jahdan Blakkamoore, and builds on the NYC-2-Africa project from Subatomic Sound System & Nomadic Wax, a mission to musically connect the roots of NYC hip hop back through Jamaican reggae and then back to Africa. Here it takes another musical journey on an express train to Brasil

Lee “Scratch” Perry & Subatomic Sound System, “Black Ark Vampires”, a throbbing sound tune propelled by subsonic bass, bubbling skanks, and pulsing beats that balance the mystical vibes of classic Jamaican dub reggae recordings with the flammable energy and subsonic vibrations of current electronic bass music, a recipe perfected during their past four years of tours spreading authentic dub to a new generation in places like Coachella, Dub Champions Festival, and Red Bull Music Academy.

“Jah is Coming” is a bass charging 140BPM rootical dubwise UK steppers style cut inspired by classic 70s Jamaican dub. “Dubbing on the Moon” on the B side is a pulsing roots dub driven by a thunderous bassline built on Subatomic Sound System’s original reggae rockers riddim “Our Father, Our King” produced and dubbed in a Jamaican style.

Vinyl Exclusives

Lee “Scratch” Perry & Subatomic Sound System, “Black Ark Vampires”, a throbbing sound tune propelled by subsonic bass, bubbling skanks, and pulsing beats that balance the mystical vibes of classic Jamaican dub reggae recordings with the flammable energy and subsonic vibrations of current electronic bass music, a recipe perfected during their past four years of tours spreading authentic dub to a new generation in places like Coachella, Dub Champions Festival, and Red Bull Music Academy.

“Jah is Coming” is a bass charging 140BPM rootical dubwise UK steppers style cut inspired by classic 70s Jamaican dub. “Dubbing on the Moon” on the B side is a pulsing roots dub driven by a thunderous bassline built on Subatomic Sound System’s original reggae rockers riddim “Our Father, Our King” produced and dubbed in a Jamaican style.

About Subatomic Sound

Subatomic Sound is a dub and bass culture focused record label, radio show, event promotions, and home to the Subatomic Sound System DJ/production crew and live band -- based in New York City and hard at work on every level. Spearheaded by Emch as producer, DJ, and musician, Subatomic Sound does original production, audio recording, audio mastering, sound design, soundtracks, live performance and DJ sets. Subatomic Sound System is known for genre bending dubwise productions, explosive shows, and breaking down barriers with a forward thinking adaptation of 1970’s Jamaican sound system culture and analog dub reggae studio techniques to current bass music genres, digital technology, and live performances.